Ice skates have metal blades fastened to a sole of the skate boot. These blades are often referred to as “runners”. Some ice skates have metal runners attached to a blade holder, which is itself attached to the sole of the skate boot. It is often desired to enable the runner to be removable, in order to permit replacement of the runner because of damages or wear due to sharpening, use, etc.
Typically, such removable runners are composed of a stamped steel blade. In order to reduce the overall weight of ice skates, attempts have been made to reduce the weight of the runners. Accordingly, runners were developed which were made thinner (i.e. in a vertical direction extending between the ice and the sole of the skate boot) or otherwise minimized in comparison with traditional full metal blades. However, in order to provide sufficient strength and stiffness to the runner, such minimized runners often needed to be reinforced by a lighter weight material. This lighter material is typically plastic, which is over-molded over the metal portion of the runner, and which together then form a removable runner for the ice skate. These dual-material runners (i.e. stamped metal runner and over-molded plastic reinforcement portion) often may not allow available sharpening methods for standard runners to be used.